How Do I Gently Stop Thumb Sucking?
I have an almost 2-year-old, who falls asleep with his thumb in his mouth and can sleep with it for a long time. I worry about his teeth. How can I help him to quit his thumb sucking?
Thumb Sucking to Fall Asleep
Both the nighttime thumb sucking your toddler’s doing and your parental concern are normal and healthy. Sucking to sleep is a natural sleep inducer, especially after being weaned from their favorite go-to-sleep pacifier – mother’s breast. In sleep physiology, this is called a “setting event,” meaning a natural habit that a person, even a baby, gets into that prompts the brain that sleep is soon expected to follow.
Both parents and pediatricians give thumb-sucking their thumbs-up approval since the ability for infants and children to use their thumbs for comfort and for sleep is very usual. Yet, pediatricians and dentists are now voting thumbs-down on the nighttime thumb-sucking habit that continues beyond three years of age. While most thumb-sucking will naturally subside, continued habitual thumb-sucking beyond three or four years of age can cause an overbite and other dental malalignments.
More Serious Effects of Thumb Sucking
Once upon a time, pediatricians didn’t worry so much about dental malalignment in preschool children, because most of the time their teeth naturally straighten out. Yet, recent studies reveal that parents, pediatricians, and dentists need to be counseling parents at an earlier age on easing thumb-sucking. A persistent overbite, besides increasing a bunch of dental bills, is one of the hidden causes of sleep disturbances due to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
In fact, Dr. Bill often tells me about seeing patients in his office where he diagnosed OSA secondary to dental malalignment. To understand how your airway is straighter when your teeth are aligned, flex your head down like you’re sending a text. Notice when you flex your head you have an overbite and your airway narrows. Next, extend your neck as if looking up at the sky and notice that your lower jaw naturally comes forward and opens your airway. The bottom line is that we are starting to pay more attention to correcting a persistent overbite at an earlier age, and here’s how.
Tips and Tricks to Ease Thumb Sucking
After your child has thumb-sucked himself to sleep, before you go to bed, gradually try to ease his thumb out of his mouth. Next, try to ease his thumb out of his mouth as soon as he falls into a deep sleep. The goal is to gradually get him to disassociate the thumb-sucking from the setting event. In some kids, this is enough to ease the habit. But for some kids, you may need to get more creative. So if he continues to put his thumb right back into his mouth, even though he’s half asleep, here’s a thumb-sucking-taming technique we have used in several of our little nighttime suckers, especially between two and three years of age. Encourage him to fall asleep with you reading him a story or singing a song, and then wrap his dominant hand (the one that usually goes into his mouth) around a toy or teddy bear that’s big enough so he can’t get his thumb into his mouth while still cuddling the toy. Eventually, the teddy bear becomes the go-to-sleep prompt, taking over for the thumb. If his thumb still finds it’s way around teddy and into his mouth, you may have to continue to occasionally ease his thumb out of his mouth.
If your dentist is not worried, you needn’t be either. Yet, if your dentist believes that his thumb-sucking is harming his teeth, then you should give these thumb-sucking-taming tricks a try.
Martha Sears, RN
Martha is the mother of Dr. Bill’s eight children, a registered nurse, a former childbirth educator, a La Leche League leader, and a lactation consultant. Martha is the co-author of 25 parenting books and is a popular lecturer and media guest drawing on her 18 years of breastfeeding experience with her eight children (including Stephen with Down Syndrome and Lauren, her adopted daughter). Martha speaks frequently at national parenting conferences and is noted for her advice on how to handle the most common problems facing today’s mothers with their changing lifestyles. Martha is able to connect with both full-time, stay-at-home mothers and working mothers because she herself has experienced both styles of parenting. Martha takes great pride in referring to herself as a “professional mother” and one of her favorite quips when someone voices their concern about her having eight children in an already populated world is: “The world needs my children.”